There. Buried unmourned. I shall claim what small freedoms I can, and if there is the devil to pay, then I will point him here and pay him in gold.
“It’s to rain!” Mrs. McFadden called out from the French doors leading to the garden. “You’re already a mess but let’s not have you soaked through!”
Isabel stood, doing her best to brush out the muddy wreck she’d made of her day dress. She’d put on an apron under her coat but it was just one more layer of cloth to suffer from her efforts at being useful. She glanced up at the sky, startled at the black tenor of the clouds roiling above. “I see that you’re right, Mrs. McFadden. I shall come in at once.”
She gathered her tools and basket and dutifully headed back to the house.
“Ach!” Mrs. McFadden wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “A fine lady such as yourself and you look like a mud troll!”
“Yes, but look how I recovered the planting boxes for your kitchen garden, Mrs. McFadden. Won’t that be nice to have again?” she asked.
The older woman’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It will. I won’t lie. But you’ll catch your death out there sitting on that cold, wet ground, and how am I to enjoy it with you buried over there under that willow tree?”
“I’m fine,” Isabel answered with a laugh. “The fresh air is doing me a world of good.”
Mrs. McFadden crossed her arms. “Maybe so, but don’t try telling me that dirt’s good for my clean floors! Boots off here and then leave what you can on the floor by the door for a wash. I’ve got a clean blanket to wrap you in for modesty and Hamish is banished to the stables—so no worries on that lunk’s account.”
Isabel knew better than to argue. “You’re so thoughtful, Mrs. McFadden.”
She kicked off the caked mud from her boots before removing them to put in the wooden box set inside the doorway. Mrs. McFadden helped her with her coat, apron, and dress, but Isabel insisted on keeping her petticoats and underclothes. Even with Hamish safely out of the way, she was not about to make her way through the house wearing nothing but a quilted blanket.
As relaxed as I’ve become, there are some things a lady cannot consider!
She was also not about to let Mrs. McFadden catch sight of the white queen she’d tied around her neck with a ribbon to keep it close to her heart.
I’m not explaining my talisman! Nor will I take it off until he returns. . . .
She went upstairs to put on a fresh dress, and as she buttoned up the blouse, she realized that even in these intimate matters, Darius had thought of the details. Every dress he’d bought had been pretty but also practical to allow her to change with more ease and without the help of a maid. Everything buttoned in the front or allowed for her to adjust it comfortably.
It was humbling. His attentiveness and generosity. He thought of her in all things and omitted nothing if he thought it would please her or add to her comfort.
The honey in the porridge drizzled in the shape of a flower . . .
Is it possible?
He’d kissed her. That much was certain. And Isabel knew enough of the world to know that he desired her. Nor was she blind to the attraction she felt for him. Indeed, if he hadn’t been forced to race for London that very day, she had no doubt that she would have shamelessly begged him to repeat the infraction.
Kissing Darius was like tasting sugar for the first time—and uncovering a craving for sweets that would not be quieted.
It’s ridiculous but it is a truth I cannot deny.
It was a dangerous path to give in to passion, but a new rebellious voice inside of her pointed out that since leaving her husband would be publicly deemed the act of an immoral woman, she might have little to lose.
But . . . the heart is another matter, isn’t it?
It was a terrifying proposition to trust her instincts entirely.
As much as Richard hurt me physically, I think having my heart so completely broken and betrayed was the worst of it. I loved him. I must have at one point. Or I imagined myself in love, didn’t I?
Now she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything.
Her feelings for Darius had no comparison. Where her affections for Richard had felt polite and “natural,” there was nothing pale or polite in the hold that Darius had on her now. He occupied her waking thoughts and held her in her dreams. He’d crowded out most of her nightmares, replacing them with strange erotic episodes where he made love to her on the Oriental rug in his library before the fireplace or in a copper bathtub in his bedroom.
There was nothing soothing in her dreams of him but only an increasingly restless ache that spurred her to spend all her days wandering the house and yard thinking on what Darius had said about the distinctions between love and the semblance of love. She’d cleaned his library, dusting and straightening but doing her best not to actually move anything too far from its resting place. His system was a mystery but she respected him and knew that Darius saw the chaotic piles and odd notes in a different way than a casual observer. The maps looked mystical but his sketches were compelling enough to warrant frames.
Even so, she was running out of distractions.
Presently, she went down to eat her dinner alone in the library at his desk as she had each night since he’d left. Mrs. McFadden had allowed her to settle into the routine, as if instinctively aware of how comforting she found it.
Afterward she worked by lamplight, reading as much as she could in the hope that by the time he returned there would be no question of her value as an assistant. She’d found notes and sketches throughout the library as he tucked in pages to save his place in a book or to add his thoughts to the writer’s. Isabel explored as discreetly as she could, ignoring the tickle of her conscience at invading his private work space by reminding herself that she had his permission.
Even so, when she pulled out the top drawer and found a green leather-bound notebook with his initials on the cover, she froze.
What if this one is personal? What if he finds out I touched it and is angry?
The old habits of fear and self-preservation that Richard had instilled in her warred with her new independence and the easy freedom that Darius had granted her. Ultimately, curiosity won the day and Isabel lifted the large notebook out to take a peek.
It was a more personal notebook, with an outline of his plans for the house and garden and research into improving the stables with Hamish’s guidance. She was about to close it when a pencil drawing caught her eye.
It was a sketch of her with her cheek against Samson’s and, in Darius’s own hand, a bit of prose beneath it. He had an artist’s skill but the words were what captured her attention.
A divine moment, so fleeting, but to be in her presence at such an unguarded moment of beauty, her heart’s gentle nature revealed and the beast the lucky recipient of her caresses . . . I am humbled and enslaved, and will do all I can to see this goddess safely out of reach.
“Safely out of reach?” she whispered. “Of Richard’s or his own?”
She put the notebook back where she’d found it, her ears warm with guilt and her hands shaking. Isabel had stolen a glimpse of his feelings and robbed herself of the ability to deny that he was equally affected by their situation.
She stood from the desk and paced the room, finally ending back at the wall of shelves to randomly pull down a volume on India. “Come on, woman,” she chided herself, “mooning about him is getting you nowhere. Read and prove that you’re more than some flighty thing in petticoats.”
She retrieved his last academic notes on their new theory and made her way to the soft chair by the fireplace to sit with her legs tucked underneath her. Within minutes, she’d picked up the thread of their quest and was fiercely concentrating on the text to seek out the next clue to determining the magical properties of stones.
Isabel made her own notes in the margins of his, adding, as politely as she could, her opinion that seeking a scientific method to measure magic was innately contradictory and that perh
aps they should be scanning religious texts or finding a Hindu holy man to assist them.
Is there a magic incantation to make it glow, like in the fairy stories I read as a child?
It was a fanciful notion but it kept her occupied.
She gave no real credence to the idea that any object inherently had power. Father Pasqual and I are in accord on this one thing.
But she understood that Darius’s fears sprang not from vague spiritual superstitions about cursed stones or sacred rocks but from the very real and dangerous men who clung to those superstitions and would take action to protect it.
“So, if it’s not in a book on the nature of stones and the geology of the region . . .” Isabel unfolded from her perch and went back to his desk where he’d left a translated section of the Code of Manu. Isabel opened it at random only to learn that, according to the ancient Hindu text, “a woman should never enjoy her own will. She must never wish separation of her self from her husband or father, for by separation from them a woman would make both families contemptible.”
All the momentum she’d gathered died a little and she knelt soundlessly on the rug to try to take it in.
No will but a man’s to supersede mine.
Is that the key to happiness or hell? I don’t see a middle way. Isabel sighed. England or India, I am condemned a failure. A fallen, scandalous thing to be avoided and shunned.
Shame washed over her even as a part of her protested. The internal voice was stronger and clear enough to drown out self-pity.
I did nothing wrong.
The travesty of her wedding day and that first assault came back in a rush of chilly vindication.
I did nothing to deserve any of it.
From that day forward, he’d systematically broken her with isolation and punishments, rewards and assaults and vicious acts of calculated deprivation. He’d spend hours whispering insults and ungodly threats until she’d begged him to beat her and be done with it. Her soul had shriveled until the vaguest mention of a social outing was enough to render her hysterical with terror at the possibility of being exposed publicly as a failure and an abused wraith.
Honor dictated that she suffer in silence, and she’d tried to bear all of it, to find the path of behavior that would appease him and satisfy her duties.
How far did I slide down that dark, cold hole until I had no will of my own?
Until Samson intervened that day . . .
Isabel got up from the floor, leaving the manuscript pages on the carpet, and crossed over to the window to look out at the dark. Her reflection greeted her and Isabel studied the woman there for a moment.
Pale as always, with hair so blond it was nearly white, here was a familiar ghost. But this phantom’s eyes sparkled with defiance. This woman’s cheeks were fuller and touched with a faint swath of pink. Her dress was plain but pretty, and there was an air of self-possession to her.
It’s Darius’s Helen. I changed when I wasn’t looking.
She turned back to survey the room and a new revelation struck her with the force of truth. I have my own will to enjoy, and even if the law would override it, it is something that Richard can never take away from me. Never again.
Isabel pressed a palm against her chest, amazed at the pulse of her own heart beating wildly. “I did nothing wrong. I am . . . entitled to my own will. And . . . I am free to love again if I choose.”
She eyed the books lining the walls. It couldn’t all be pain and fear. Mrs. McFadden was right. Who speaks of such things? Who would write of them? Who would dedicate endless volumes in praise of anything as vile as Richard’s actions, and how in the world would you coordinate such a vast conspiracy to create an untruth?
So it must exist.
Mustn’t it?
The hour had grown late so she carried her dinner tray back to the empty kitchen and left it, praying Mrs. McFadden wouldn’t mind the trespass. She lit a candle and climbed the stairs, pleased to find that she might be tired enough to sleep.
In her room, she changed quickly and pulled the warm stone from the small hearth where the housekeeper had left it for her, wrapped it in linen, and tucked it into her bed. She was about to climb in when a light outside her window caught her eye.
Isabel moved cautiously to pull the curtains back only to see Mrs. McFadden crossing the yard with a lantern. The clock in the downstairs hall chimed midnight and Isabel marveled at the strange sight of the housekeeper entering the stables at such an unlikely hour. In shock, she watched as the light moved up the stairs and then illuminated Mr. MacQueen’s private apartment long enough to show a silhouette of the pair embracing passionately before the light was extinguished.
Darius said they were a match but—I thought he exaggerated or . . .
She suddenly couldn’t stop smiling.
For there it was.
Love and desire, as real as the rain and the earth.
As intoxicating as any wine. One kiss and she’d accepted it that there might be more in a man’s touch than pain. But fear had kept her from embracing a greater new truth—that love might also be within reach.
If ever she’d have consigned it to fairy tales and dreams, apparently even a sweet dragon like Mrs. McFadden knew better.
Common sense trumped Isabel’s past experience.
Mrs. McFadden said that she’d held heaven in her hands. And when Darius kissed me, I began to understand what she meant. What would it be like to have such a man and be his completely? To be protected instead of punished?
Every woman in her acquaintance spent nearly all their efforts in achieving marriage. What woman would seek out pain if that’s all there was to be had? If it were always as it had been with Richard, then no woman as strong as Mrs. McFadden would cross a dark, muddy yard to attain it.
Isabel stepped back from the window and climbed into the soft refuge of her bed, burying herself under the covers. It was not a convenient development or an easy admission to make to herself, acknowledging just how far she’d gone in her obsession.
But there it was.
She had fallen in love with Darius Thorne. Not as a victim, but as a free woman, and now she would have to decide what to do.
The pieces are all on the board and it will be up to me to either forfeit my chance or try to win the Black King’s heart and prove that I’m strong enough for the game.
Chapter
13
“You cannot leave! As your physician, I forbid it.” Rowan stepped in front of him, attempting to block Darius from the door. “You need two weeks in bed before you travel, Darius.”
“I can leave. Don’t be a bully, West. It doesn’t suit you.” Darius held out the folded pages he’d drafted. “Here.”
“What is that?” Rowan didn’t reach for it.
“All I’ve learned to date. I wanted to compile my thoughts and make sure that someone else had the record.”
Just in case you’re right, Rowan, and my lungs fold in on me.
“And,” he forced himself to slow down, unwilling to risk a demonstration of just how weak he was by running out of air, “as you said, the Jackal is off licking his wounds. There’s lots of time.”
“But . . . with everything that’s happened—surely your place is here!”
Darius shook his head. “No. I need to . . . take care of something in Scotland. I’ll return to London as soon as it’s feasible.”
“Your lungs are damaged, Darius. You’re at risk for pneumonia—you’re already on the edge of exhaustion, and two days of rest aren’t enough to allow you to recover for me to let you go.”
“I’ll sleep for a fortnight when I get back but I cannot stay here.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you. I need you to trust me, Rowan, and then advocate on my behalf to Ashe. He won’t understand and I don’t want to add to his worries. He has Caroline to fear for. He doesn’t need to add my concerns to the pile. None of you do.” Darius pulled on his coat. “At least, not yet.”
“We’re not going to abandon you, Darius. No matter what kind of trouble you’re in.”
Darius smiled. “I’m counting on the loyalty of my friends, Dr. West. I’ll call on the Jaded for help soon. I have no illusions of my self-reliance when it comes to—I’ll send word as soon as I can.”
Rowan crossed his arms. “I could physically haul you back to bed myself.”
“And then what? Sit on me? Post a guard?” Darius began to button his coat. “Rowan. Please. I wouldn’t insist on going if it weren’t . . . I have a promise to keep and I won’t be able to breathe, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, until I’ve seen to matters at home.”
Rowan gave him a searching look. “Matters at home.”
Darius squared his shoulders. “Matters. At. Home.”
Rowan’s stance slowly relaxed. “Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“I’ll take what precautions I can, Dr. West, and just for you, I will live to be a hundred.” Darius did his best not to smile at the audacious lie and failed.
“I’ll tell my wife you declared yourself immortal and see how that strikes her,” Rowan conceded reluctantly. “I hope you appreciate the sacrifice of domestic bliss I am making here.”
Darius gave him one nod before heading out the door.
He’d feared for his friends, but the minute he’d left Helen behind, he’d been a man torn and divided.
If only I could be in two places at once.
Before he’d reached the outskirts of London, Darius realized that Rowan hadn’t been too far wrong.
His return was even more grueling than his headlong rush to reach London. The urgency to see Helen again ground against his soul and robbed him of his peace of mind. Darius battled a physical need to assure himself that she was safe and that none of the nightmarish visions of potential tragedy had befallen her in his absence. It was as serious a spur to speed as any.
He was so exhausted by nightfall, he almost gave up and conceded defeat, but the idea that Helen could be facing her husband undefended or simply afraid in the night without anyone there to comfort her—it was unacceptable.
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